A conventional workflow application runs natively on a single physical machine thus providing a workflow development and execution platform which enables a user to construct and execute workflow-based programs. In contrast to a traditional approach to simply writing lines of code, the workflow application user constructs a workflow-based program by creating separate workflow activities and then linking the separate workflow activities together.
At runtime, the workflow application running natively on the single physical machine executes the workflow activities in order based on how the activities are linked with respect to each other. In particular, the workflow application treats each activity as a discrete (or atomic) piece of logic which is interdependent with the other activities of the workflow.
For example, if activity B depends from activity A, the workflow application does not execute activity B until the workflow application has finished executing activity A. A conventional workflow platform similar to that described above is the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) technology provided by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash.